Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Tabloid Baby makes Baseball Hall of Fame


Our Man Elli in Israel has discovered a fact that Pulitzer Prize gatekeeper Sig Gissler might have found interesting before unceremoniously rejecting our nomination: Tabloid Baby has earned a place in The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown!

Our groundbreaking, exclusive, historic coverage of the benighted single season and wacky aftermath of the Israel Baseball League was cited as a major source in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2007-2008, discussed at length in the hallowed Baseball Hall of Fame, and immortalized in print in the recent book edited by William M. Simons.

Gaining special attention was Elli Wohlgelernter's bombshell exposé of the IBL, an article that first appeared on this site exclusively days after the season ended as Can't Anyone Here Run This Game, and causing an international sports firestorm the likes of which would not be seen until the Tiger Woods scandal.



Read all of Tabloid Baby's Israel Baseball League coverage at our Baseball in Israel site.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Ferrara first death of Israel Baseball League


Our Man Elli in Israel has resurfaced to bring us sad news: what appears to be the first death among the veterans of the Israel Baseball League. Team manager Tony Ferrara was 84.

"Tony took over for Ken Holtzman when he was fired from Petah Tikva Pioneers," Elli recalls. "Real, real nice guy, players loved him, low-key, and a baseball man through and through.

"Tony may not have been Jewish, but he was the epitome of a mensch."

Tony Ferrara played four seasons with St. Louis Cardinals affiliates before injury ended his dream, but went on to work as a batting practice pitcher, bullpen catcher and scout for Major League teams including the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs and Oakland A’s.

He also coached college and in the minors-- and acted in and was technical adviser on The Natural.

He was a longtime friend of Mickey Mantle and even wore Mantle's number 7 in his most recent job as bench coach for the Newark Bears.

There was an impromptu memorial service for Ferrara yesterday at the Babe Ruth bat at Yankee Stadium. One of The Mick's sons was there, along with Ron Darling, Art Shamsky, Ed Kranepool, Miracle Met and IBL manager Art Shamsky and legendary Yankee publicist and IBL official Marty Appel.

Click here to see our complete coverage of the ill-fated Israel baseball League on our Israel Baseball League archive site.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Holy Land Hardball: Watch the movie about the Israel Baseball League for free online


One of the many highlights of our solid year covering the foibles of the fledgling, floundering and flummoxed Israel Baseball League was the release of the film Holy Land Hardball. The entertaining and exciting doco about the league's startup was called "socko!" by Variety and, Our Man Elli in Israel has emerged to inform us, is available for viewing online through Thursday on the SnagFilms website.

Click here to watch Holy Land Hardball.

And click here to see our complete Pulitzer Prize nominated coverage (oy, Sig Gissler, you putz!) of the Israel Baseball League.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Update: Israel Baseball League's controversial "interim president" and twittering, money-seeking huckster David Solomont files Chapter 11



    David Solomont has filed for bankruptcy protection.

    Solomont is the well-known and controversial Boston area investor who took over as frontman for the Israel Baseball League from disgraced Boston bagel baron Larry Baras amid the financial disarray that followed its disastrous first season, intimated that he would rescue and restart the league with his own personal fortune and connections, then promised an eleventh-hour 20-game second season that was eventually downgraded to a five-game show weekend that never took place but was never officially canceled. When last heard from in these parts last December, Solomont was still attempting to raise money from US-based Zionists and Jews for a 2009 Israeli Baseball season that had already been blocked by Israeli government sports officials.

    Solomont filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston.

    Solomont, who was a pioneer in announcing his business intentions and daily activities on Twitter, reportedly was a founder of the Massachusetts Software Council and a founder of CommonAngels, a top angel investment firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts.

    Solomont listed his assets as being between $1 million and $10 million. His wife, Joan Solomont, is listed as a fellow debtor.

    An attorney for Solomont refused to comment on the case.

    Solomont has faced legal troubles in the past. In 2004 he was accused in civil cases of diverting money from a startup he presided over to a holding company he ran. The outcome of those allegations is still unclear.

    Solomont's Israel baseball shenanigans and the entire exploits of the Israel Baseball league were documented here in coverage led by Our Man Elli in Israel. The entirety of our Pultizer Prize-nominated coverage can be found at our Baseball in Israel archive site.

    Friday, January 23, 2009

    Jerusalem Post: "Baseball in Israel is on deck for a second at-bat"


    The Friday Feature:
    Baseball in Israel is on deck for a second at-bat
    Jan. 23, 2009
    ALEXANDER BRITELL, THE JERUSALEM POST

    Israel may have lost its one and only baseball league after a disappointing single season in 2007, but the dream of diamonds in the desert is getting another chance.

    This week it was announced that Maccabi Haifa Heat owner Jeffrey Rosen and New York Yankees minority owner and minor league baseball mogul Marvin Goldklang have reached an agreement with the Israel Association of Baseball to perform due diligence on a possible return of professional baseball to Israel.

    "When we saw the old IBL in 2007, the concept struck a chord in a lot of us who would love to see baseball in Israel," Goldklang, who resigned from the IBL board along with a host of notable names after its only season, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

    "I had an interest in the concept dating back to that time, before that time, it's something that I think has been at the back of my mind as something I d love to see in Israel for quite some time, well before the IBL."

    The new agreement gives Goldklang, Rosen and several as-of-yet-unnamed partners exclusive rights to investigate making Israeli baseball an economic and practical reality.

    They will cooperate with IAB to build the foundation for a successful professional baseball operation in Israel, rather than just plop down a league.

    Accordingly, a new pro league is not expected for at least another year, and probably two.

    The new partners stressed patience, keen on avoiding the mistakes made by now-defunct Israel Baseball League.

    Goldklang, who also owns four minor league baseball teams, says that following the dissolution of the IBL, the IAB began contacting those experienced in pro baseball in the US about whether they had an interest in moving forward.

    "Our response to them," he says, "was that it would be something in which we might have interest, but only if we could approach it the way we felt it should have been approached by the old league-to do some serious due diligence before opening our doors.

    "One of the assets that we have is we have people on the ground, we have an office in Haifa, staff in Israel working with the Heat," said Andrew Wilson, Director of Marketing for Rosen's company, Triangle Financial.

    "Jeff was one of the original investors in the IBL, and he is a huge fan of baseball. And a huge fan of Israel. So a match like this is his dream. Unfortunately a lot of the investors got burned with the IBL. There was a lack of funding, a lack of staff, of advertising and not enough communication between anybody behind the scenes.

    "The IBL did virtually no preparation in Israel prior to the 2007 season. Marv, Jeff and their group will create a real business plan based on solid research and acceptable business practices," said Haim Katz, president of the Israel Association of Baseball.

    "I don't want to speculate as to when we will see a new league. The appearance of the league will depend upon some solid number crunching as well as well planned creative ideas. To simply build it all at once will not be enough to succeed and is pointless. It will take a lot of work and dedication to execute a successful plan. We believe these are the people who can pull it off."

    The agreement, which creates a de facto partnership between Goldklang, Rosen and their partners, is going to have two main focuses: marketing, and facilities.

    Goldklang said they would test the potential effects approaches which have proven so successful at the minor league level in the States.

    "The essence is to work on creating an atmosphere in the ballpark that can be enjoyable even to non-baseball fans," he said.

    Some of these marketing tactics, he said, might include increased picnic areas like in US minor league parks, entertaining PA announcers who don't simply announce the name of the batter and promotional events, all with the aim of promoting interaction with fans and creating the type of atmosphere that would hope attract more native Israeli fans.

    "It's not like the States, where the games sell out all the time," said Wilson. "You have to connect with the fans. One of the things we do in Haifa is constant emailing, putting out releases, thanking the fans, marketing with posters all over the city - we're community-based."

    Wilson said he and Rosen hoped to eventually have live streaming video of Israeli baseball games, as does Maccabi Haifa now.

    "We had 15,000 separate visitors to our site to watch the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv. It's not easy to get a lot of fans at the game," Wilson said. "You can't just expect thousands of people to show up, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of marketing-that's what we learned with Maccabi Haifa, we're very happy with crowds that we're drawing."

    "Unlike the prior league, we do have the necessary funding in place to take ourselves through the first phase of our effort," Goldklang says.

    "I think we have assembled a group of partners, including people who are prominent names in Major League Baseball. If you look at us as a group, the management of this operation is likely to be different than anything that has been tried before."

    One of the key issues will be finding places for teams to play.

    "There is no facility in Israel that could be fairly called a ballpark," Goldklang asserts. There are baseball fields that are fine for youth programs, but when it comes to putting professional players on the field, and making the game work at the professional level, you need a lot more than what the old league had to work with."

    Wilson said they hope to develop two or three real ballparks, by either building new complexes or expanding existing facilities such as Gezer or the Baptist Village.

    The target is for an eventual eight markets including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ra'anana, Beit Shemesh, Modi'in, Haifa, Netanya and the Sha'ar HaNegev region.

    Goldklang said the Sha'ar Hanegev region was especially interesting because it included about a quarter of a million people living only 20-25 minutes from Ashkelon who don't have an abundance of recreational options.

    There won't be a season in 2009. To try and throw something together quickly, Goldklang maintains, would just bring upon the same problems that caused the earlier effort to fold. The target is one to two years, with some "presence" in 2009 to establish a marketing and fan connection.

    "This is a very serious endeavor," Goldklang says. "If I didn't think it was a better than 50% chance we could do this, these are the type of people that wouldn't be getting involved. We're not in the business of wasting our time."

    Wednesday, January 21, 2009

    Israeli Baseball: Oy, boy! Here we go again!


    This just in-- something to knock Gaza off the front page:

    ISRAEL ASSOCIATION OF BASEBALL ANNOUNCES
    NEW PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL INITIATIVE

    Tel Aviv, January 20, 2009 – The Israel Association of Baseball (IAB) has announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations with a group of prominent North American sportsmen who are planning the development of a new professional baseball league in Israel.

    The group, which will operate under an American company formed for the purpose of developing the professional baseball initiative, is headed by Marv Goldklang, a part owner of the New York Yankees and principal owner of four minor league professional baseball teams in the United States, Jeff Rosen, owner of the Maccabi Haifa Heat Professional Basketball Club of the Israeli Premier League and Chairman of Triangle Financial Services, and other prominent individuals involved in Major League Baseball and other sports endeavors.

    The initial agreement, in the form of an exclusive option covering not less than one, nor more than two years, would permit the group to conduct due diligence regarding both marketing and facility objectives to determine the long-term economic viability of a professional baseball league. As part of the arrangement, the group also would provide financial and other support for the Israeli and international amateur baseball programs operated by the IAB.

    The IAB operates under the authority of the Israel Ministry of Science, Culture Sport, which supports this new initiative to establish a viable professional baseball league in the country.


    “The IAB is very excited about working with Marv Goldklang and his partners,” said Haim Katz, IAB Chairman. “Marv has over 25 years of experience with Major League-affiliated professional baseball leagues, and with independent professional leagues as well. We feel the concepts that he promotes in sports, including unique entertainment features designed to appeal even to non-baseball fans, can revolutionize not only baseball in Israel, but other sports as well. Jeff Rosen, a prominent American businessman, is committed to promoting sports in Israel and has a proven record of success by taking the Maccabi Heat basketball team in just one year from the doldrums of the lower league to prime time recognition in the Israel premier basketball league.”


    Professional baseball was attempted during the summer of 2007 by an organization known as the Israel Baseball League (IBL), with six teams sharing three fields and completing a 46 game schedule. The IBL was not a financial success, and was unable continue its baseball operations.


    “The IAB has learned many lessons from its experience with the IBL and our decision to move forward with this new group was not taken lightly,” said Katz. “We feel this group is composed of high caliber, professional, experienced and very reputable individuals. They are not spending other people’s money but investing their own at this point and performing all the necessary groundwork required to protect their potential investment and develop a viable structure for professional baseball in Israel. We have no doubt that there is no better group to carry out this task and we look forward to building baseball in Israel with them.”


    The North American group hopes to establish a fully staffed professional baseball league in the next one or two years, depending on the results of its efforts during the initial agreement which, as noted, would include development of strategies designed to create additional and improved baseball facilities appropriate for the game at the professional level.

    Baseball has long been called America’s “National Pastime,” and is now played in more than 110 nations, according to the International Baseball Federation. It has been an Olympic sport and will hold the second World Baseball Classic this year, with 16 nations competing.

    About the IAB

    The IAB is a non-profit organization (amutah) duly registered as such with the Israeli Authorities, with the purpose of promoting baseball in Israel. It is recognized as the governing body of baseball in Israel by all the official Israeli sports bodies, including the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport; the Israel Sports Gambling Commission; the Israeli Olympic Committee; Otzma; and by International Baseball Association (IBAF) and the Confederation of European of Baseball (CEB).